


Inferno and The Operator

by saltyplaydough



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mutual Pining, Supervillains, so much obliviousness i don't even know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyplaydough/pseuds/saltyplaydough
Summary: Robert had made his debut into the criminal underworld with a series of small jobs that went without a hitch. But things got complicated once he’d set his sights on riskier targets. On his own, his powers and charm only got him so far. He needed someone who would watch his back. Someone who would help him finish what he set out to do.But there was no way Robert could’ve prepared for Aaron.
Relationships: Aaron Dingle/Robert Sugden
Comments: 12
Kudos: 47





	Inferno and The Operator

**Author's Note:**

  * For [their_dark_materials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/their_dark_materials/gifts).



> For the prompt, "You're jealous"
> 
> way less serious than the summary implies. seriously such high levels of idiot energy.

Robert comes up with the plans. It’s been this way for as long as he can remember; he used to plan minor distractions outside of the house when he was younger, so he could get a few minutes alone to dismantle a beloved home appliance with his mind while everyone else was out searching for a missing flock.

He’d come down once the coast was clear, with his trusty notebook in hand (to track his progress with) and Victoria’s old baby blanket tied around his neck (‘WizKid’ scrawled across it in blue paint; he’d still wanted to be a superhero then), and get to work.

The problem, as it has always been, is that Robert never was the best at executing said plans.

You see, _the plan_ was always to dismantle the appliance, and then put it back together in its previous condition. But he never quite managed that. As it turned out, building a working machine was a lot harder than taking it apart. And by the time he remembered that, someone would catch on to Robert being the only one not with them and rush back into the house, too late, to find bits of metal strewn over the countertop and footsteps banging back up the stairs.

:::

He succeeded just once before having to leave home. Slapped the radio back into form, (sans make-shift cape; he’d long grown out of it by then) and apart from a mystifying minute of ticking every time you pressed play, it had worked fine.

A month after that, he would play a stupid game with his stupid brother, wouldn’t be able to save Max King and would be sent away for not being worthy of his powers.

:::

Aaron had been planned as well.

Well. Sort of.

Robert had made his debut into the criminal underworld with a series of small jobs that went without a hitch. But things got complicated once he’d set his sights on riskier targets.

On his own, his powers and charm only got him so far. He needed someone who would watch his back. Someone who would help him finish what he set out to do.

What he needed, he thought, was his very own henchman.

The prospects had trickled through in stops and starts. Some, Robert worried were too stupid to keep up with him, and others, in their comic book villain ensemble and annoyingly peculiar affectations, were clearly too interested in a fantasy that Robert didn’t have the patience for. It was the exceedingly _normal_ ones, however, who had unsettled Robert the most.

(Sanity is an illusion in their line of work. The really messed up ones, the sort who carved into innocents for fun in their underground dens of torture, were also the ones who seamlessly weaved mundanity through their to-do-list of horrors: calling out a neighbourly hello through the kitchen window as they scrub blood from under their fingernails, taking a ten-minute break from their day job to look up large plastic tubs (big enough to fit an adult), and installing an entertainment system in said underground den of torture so they don’t have to miss strictly while laying out tools, scared whimpers harmonising with _Gymnopédie No.1_ and the cheers from the crowd.)

When Aaron had slammed out of their first meeting with a glare more frightening than the rough scar running down the length of his face, his permanently bruised knuckles clenched tight in a blazing fist, and dislike lining every inch of him, _none_ of it hidden away, Robert had been ready to try trusting him with his life.

By the end of his first day at work, Aaron had expressed plain doubt that Robert was a card-carrying member of the League of Nefariousness (Robert had threatened to show him the framed letter of acceptance, hung at pride of place on his office wall). By day three he’d slammed him into a wall, snarling into his face, and Robert had had to come to terms with the very confusing situation in his pants. It took till the end of day four, after too many hours of covert staring, to admit that he might have a problem.

By his second week, when shit had hit the fan in the middle of what was meant to be a simple intelligence-gathering operation, and Aaron had taken charge, flipped the script, and saved his neck,—literally, from a very sharp knife—Robert realised he’d gone and found himself a partner instead of a henchman.

There was no way Robert could’ve prepared for him.

And that brings him back to his current plan of action.

:::

Robbing the science facility _while_ the gala is in full swing at the first floor of the building, instead of doing it days after that, as they had originally planned, will mean they’ll be working on a tight schedule from now on, he decides. And he’ll have to make a list of other changes as well, taking into account all the extra pairs of eyes that’ll be scuttling around at an event of this scale, and the tighter security that’ll come with it. But it’s better this way, really; Robert’s always preferred performing to an audience anyway. And if he wants to get the message out, he needs everyone watching.

They’ll make their move late into the evening. Give the guests enough time to get bladdered, and the security complacent. _It’ll work out_ , Robert decides.

Besides, he deserves a posh night out. It’s been months of clandestine weapons trades in grimy warehouse buildings and stopping for bad takeaway on the way back from rooftop shootouts, leaning heavy against Aaron under the guise of exhaustion. He wants an excuse to wear a suit and polish off flutes of champagne while he’s at it.

But the upper crust only ever throws their parties—with diamonds dripping down necks and camera crews parked outside to greet them—for Heroes. Nevermind that they’re also the ones secretly bankrolling half the evil schemes in play across the city on any given day.

Robert wonders if Aaron will let himself be talked into wearing a suit. He knows he won’t do it just because he’s asked, and Robert can make up a reason, tell him it’s an essential part of the plan, but Aaron’s got quite the knack for sniffing out his bullshit.

He sighs, feeling sorry for himself all over again, and watches a boxy suit jacket take form over his little digital doodle of Aaron running down the side of the updated plan on a loop, a mock-up of him on his way to empty out a heavily guarded vault, eleven floors below ground, where 35 grams of rare dryadrium is being stored; More than three times the amount Robert needs to finish building his killer robot prototype. But staring at doodle-Aaron’s over-serious eyebrows makes his chest too heavy to ignore, so he gives up and slumps back into his seat noisily, away from his tablet.

He lasts about six seconds before sending the offending item flying off the table and into his palm, a new window already open (and sharing the screen with his list) to the paparazzi shot of Aaron and the Red Rider for him to glower down at. He’s never been one for self-restraint.

**COFFEE DATE WITH MYSTERY LOVER!**

_Will the darling of justice Red Ride off into the sunset with his new bad-boy?_

To the undiscerning eye, Robert supposes they might look undeniably _involved_. They’re stood so close it’s amazing the two disposable cups of coffee clutched between them haven’t spilt, the Red Rider’s hands are around Aaron’s upper arms like he’s pulling him in for a hug, and his smile might be described as teasing, by some (Robert just thinks it makes him look like a tit).

But Robert sees right through it. He recognises the street they’re pictured on as the one between the abandoned power station they work out of and the cafe closest to it. The article mentions they were spotted yesterday morning. Probably right after Aaron had picked up their usual order of one americano and one regular coffee with a splash of milk, same as he does on the days he comes in before ten.

While Red‘s got his meticulously focus-grouped smile in place, Aaron looks totally baffled by him (though the article tries to pass it off as starstruck). And why wouldn’t he be? That is a lot of red lycra to take in before you’ve had your morning coffee.

So yes, Robert knows it's stupid for him to be feeling so strongly about this photo when there's clearly no truth behind what it’s saying. But he can't help but find it extremely unfair that it’s the _Red Rider_ who gets to be paired off with Aaron (even if it’s only in the eyes of bored commuters looking for a bit of morning gossip to get them through the day) when Robert’s the one wreaking glorious havoc across the city with him.

Of course, it’s not like the public knows who Aaron is.

But still. Of all people. It had to be a _Hero_. Ugh.

Thus, the plan. And he can’t wait to see it play out, too. The _darling of justice,_ dancing the night away at a gala held in his honour, while 1.7 million pounds worth of precious metal gets swiped from right under his nose. Robert sneers down at the crude stick figure of the Red Rider sketching itself into existence, tears shooting out of his eyes in black dashes of ink as his adoring crowd turns away in disgust.

:::

He’s so busy trying to glare a hole into Red’s smiling face without accidentally blowing the tablet to bits, he almost misses the low hiss of the lab doors sliding open behind him. He blinks and the window closes, leaving him with only the details of the new plan to stare at, just as Aaron plunks his coffee in front of him.

He also gets a tired nod, a non-verbal _hi_ as Aaron makes his way around the table, and already Robert feels better about the day.

He manages a mumbled thanks back, somewhere between grabbing at the cup and tilting its contents onto his tongue. It’s too hot to drink comfortably still, even after having weathered the icy spring air on its way here. He leans his mouth against the lid of the cup instead and thinks about Aaron seeping warmth back through its walls with his hands.

“You’re sure these are microwave safe, yeah?” he asks, eyes blinking wide in false innocence, but doesn’t hold back his chuckle at the devastating judgement he gets for it. He’d watched Aaron blow up his lunch once, food and cracked pieces of a bowl all over him and the floor, and hasn’t shut up about it since.

“Right, I’ll leave you with cold coffee next time then, shall I?” Aaron says. His voice is still rough with morning disuse.

Robert puts his coffee back on the table so he can rest his chin on his palm and look up at Aaron. It brings him a little closer to him. “You wouldn’t. I’d moan on about it too much.”

“You’d be a nightmare,” he agrees, smiling behind his own cup. He’s just finished folding himself onto the only other chair in the lab in a way Robert can’t imagine to be comfortable, coffee cradled close to his chest, when he snaps his fingers. A small flame floats over his thumb. He slumps even further into his chair.

Aaron bears his power like a spare limb tucked away too tight and always too long, even if it’s only been minutes, never fully comfortable until he can stretch it out, feel it break apart from the perimeters of his skin and breath on its own.

They watch it skip lazily across the back of his fingers and weave through them for a moment.

“Has Tate said what she wants from us?” Aaron asks.

Robert feels his stomach begin to sink. “That’s today?”

Aaron raises his eyebrows at him. “She’s sending her driver to pick us up at 10, Robert. Remember?”

Robert thunks his head against the table and groans. They don’t have the time for whatever Tate wants. At this rate, they’ll be stumbling through the job unprepared, and Red will come swooping in to save the day, and they’ll be the laughing stock of the city, another notch in Red’s shiny, crime-fighting belt, and Aaron will leave him for being a screw-up.

Robert groans louder.

“Robert?”

He takes a second more to hide behind his arms, then pulls himself back up.

Aaron’s hand is half extended towards him, his flame extinguished and his eyes worried.

No. He wants this to work. He wants the world to see them together, see that they _work_. It might not be as Robert and Aaron, not to anyone else. Maybe not even to Aaron. But it’ll be close enough.

Robert leans back into his chair to pull his phone out from inside his trouser pocket. He can fix this.

“How about we cancel the meeting with Tate?” he says, but he’s already typing out a ‘ _Something’s come up, can’t do today’_ to send to her.

“You what?” Aaron laughs.

“You never liked her anyway.” Aaron had dragged his feet when they’d first taken a job for her. _She’ll start thinking she owns us_ , he’d said.

But Robert had insisted. They’d needed the money, then.

Aaron puffs his cheeks out. “I’m not complaining, mate. But she’s not gonna like it.”

“Eh,” Robert shrugs it off. They finished their last job with her, clean and simple, and they haven’t agreed to anything new. There's no reason for any business to be left hanging between them.

“You gonna tell me why?” Aaron asks.

“We’ve got enough on our plate now.”

That gets a confused head tilt. “Do we?”

“About that. I was thinking–” he stops to roll his eyes at Aaron’s cheeky wince. “What if we broke into the facility on Saturday instead.”

The head tilt stays confused. “Before the gala?”

Robert shakes his head. “At the gala.”

Aaron huffs out an unsure laugh like he thinks Robert might be pulling his leg, then sobers when he sees he’s being serious.

“Why?” he wants to know. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing, I uh." Right. A reason. "I thought about it, and it’s better this way."

Aaron looks at him like he's gone mad, which. Robert should've expected that, really. He takes a second to wonder why he hasn't prepared a script for this.

“I don't…" Aaron squints at Robert like he’ll find an explanation on him somewhere if he looks hard enough. When that fails him, he searches blankly around the lab, perhaps looking for a clue to where he should even start.

Robert waits.

"This isn’t what we prepared for,” he lands on.

“It’ll be fine.” Robert will make sure of it. “I know the mechanics of the security set up around the vault like the back of my hand by now.”

It’s a precise clockwork of systems designed by a Swedish company, and it’s kept Robert up for weeks trying to puzzle it out.

Aaron nods his head slowly, like a man who’s had to endure long hours listening to Robert mumble to himself in increasing desperation in their shared office space.

“I’ll get you past it. Trust me.”

Aaron nods more readily at that, and Robert’s heart finds a moment in all this to skip a beat. He urges himself to get a grip.

“There’ll be more guards, yes, but the gala should keep them occupied for the most part. The new guards aren’t there to protect the dryadrium, Aaron. They’re there to keep the high profile guests safe.”

Aaron still doesn’t seem convinced. “There’ll be cameras everywhere. Ministers, Heroes, tycoons, journalists... How’re we meant to get in? Or out, for that matter.”

It’s then that the idea hits him. _Oh,_ he thinks. _I’m a genius._

“We won’t seem out of place if we pretend we’re just another two names on the guest list...”

And here’s the tricky bit. All he has to do is be light-handed with the delivery. Just throw it out there, nothing to it.

“...We’ll fit right in in a couple of suits.”

Aaron barely gives him a second to hope. “Yeah, no, we’re not doin’ it on Saturday, then.”

“Wh–”

“I’m not wearing a suit, Robert. Not unless I’m stood in front of a judge.”

"But–” Robert tries not to panic. “But you _have_ to."

“And why is that?” Aaron leans back into his chair, comfortable as ever, and slips both hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. “You haven’t said.”

Robert’s been hoping he won’t notice. “Well,” he starts. “It’s like you said. There’ll be loads of cameras there. And reporters from major news networks. It’s time we introduced ourselves to the people. Officially. Don’t you think?”

 _It’s time they learn you’re mine_ , he tries not to think.

Because it’s not true, however much he wants it to be. He’s not… _they’re_ not…

There’d been that one time, sure, that one kiss–

( _Gold light filtered over his skin, cutting through the shadows of his face and making his scar dance. Robert had seen seasoned criminals give Aaron a wide berth, everything about him screaming: get any closer and lose your teeth. Right then, watching him watch flames rise up into the night from what was left of the hideout he’d just tossed a giant ball of fire into (killing, in the process, a jumped-up mobster who hadn’t known his place),_ soft _was the only word that fit._

_The tension he’d accepted as a part of Aaron had bled out. His lips had fallen open around barely a hint of a smile, and his eyes… they were drooping down the sides a little, tired after a long fight but still lit up by the beauty of the destruction he wrought._

_Robert couldn’t look anywhere else._

_He saw his hand on Aaron’s cheek before he realised he’d put it there in the first place. The tips of his fingers reached past an ear and his thumb smoothed against the rough beard under it. There was no force behind the touch. He didn’t want to interrupt, he just… he wanted..._

_But Aaron had turned to him anyway. Unwaveringly steady, where Robert was starting to lose his grip._

_He’d caught Robert then, with his heart beating outside his chest, and his eyes had lowered to his lips, asking for more._

_And Robert had gone to him._ )

–but they don’t talk about it.

Aaron watches him. “You’re up to something.”

Aaron can prove fuck all. Robert’s always up to something. He’s the man with the plan.

“It’s just… we’ve been doing this for half a year now. We’re good at it. We’re not common thugs, Aaron, we’re _Supervillains_. We’re going to snatch the world from them one day and they should at least get to know our names.”

 _Their_ names. Tethered to each other for the rest of their careers. Inferno and The Operator.

“No faces,” of course not, “but our signature on the scene of the crime. For a real audience, this time.”

They’ve been trying it out, a network of gears scorched into the ground or up a wall, but the powers that be have been able to keep it out of the papers somehow, credit for their work—at least the ones they haven’t been able to hide from the people altogether—being sloppily assigned to gang disputes. “Let’s stick our names under it as well. They’ll have to take notice, “ he says, grin turning wild at the thought.

He can tell Aaron’s starting to give in by the sulk settling in in his cheeks and around his mouth. “Don’t know why you had to wait till now to decide that,” he grumbles quietly, and then stops.

Robert allows himself a small smile at the victory. His tablet screen unlocks.

Aaron’s on board, and he’d known that would be the toughest hurdle to get over, but they still do need a way to get on the final RSVP list. Robert starts another list for that. He wonders if Leyla will know anything. She’s had some experience organising events like these in the past, before she was found out to have swindled millions of pounds from investors and had to leave the country. Or maybe they could comb through the building plans again. See if there’s another way for them to sneak in–

“You saw the article,” he hears.

The digital ink stops its frenzied scrawl across the screen. Instead, it quivers in place, forming a nervous-looking black blob at the end of a half-written letter. “Hm? Oh! You mean the one from the tabloid?” he says to the blob. “Think I saw someone reading it on the train.” He could stop there. He should. But of course, he doesn’t. “You two make a cute couple.”

“You’re jealous,” Aaron accuses.

(So maybe they don’t talk about the kiss, but sometimes they do talk around it.)

Robert doesn’t flinch. He looks over at Aaron, schooling his face into the picture of incredulity. “Of you?” he scoffs. “What, you think I’ve been secretly pining after the Red Rider all this time?” Robert laughs, shaking his head at that. He knows he’s overdoing it, just a touch, but that’s kind of the point.

It works. Aaron looks thrown off for a couple of beats, and then his face _falls_ , before a carefully blank mask gets put up in its place. “What,” he says, mouth tight around the word.

Wait, no. “No, no, no, I’m not,” he rushes to assure Aaron, serious this time, and feels like he can breathe again once Aaron’s shoulders start to lower.

He almost regrets correcting him so quickly, with the way Aaron’s back to squinting at him and making Robert want to run.

After painful several silent minutes of Robert avoiding his gaze in favour of animating an illustration of the pair of them cackling next to a mountain of stolen dryadrium (aesthetically more impressive than drawing them cackling next to a small, 35 gram pile, even if inaccurate), he peeks up just in time to catch Aaron scratch at his brow and shake his head at the table between them like he can’t believe this is what his life has come to. Robert relates deeply.

“It wasn’t–” Aaron gestures uselessly with his hand, turning pink in the face.

Robert watches him struggle. “What?” he asks, around the grin on his face.

Aaron’s glare might be more effective if he isn’t still blushing hard. “He walked right into me outside the cafe, and then he wouldn’t stop,” more gestures at his face, which is pulled into a grimace, “smiling.” He says this the way only he would when confronted with a too-friendly, (allegedly) good looking superhero: with confusion and a healthy amount of dread. Robert tries not to smile. “You know how they lose their heads over ‘im.” He shrugs like Robert hasn’t been moping and plotting all morning over this.

He’s got a point, though. The tabloids were dead set on the Red Rider hiding a secret family in Spain only last month. Two weeks after that, they were speculating on wedding colours after a picture of him chatting with a cashier at the grocer’s started circulating. Why he felt the need to do his shopping in his hero suit is anyone's guess.

Also, Robert possibly spends too much time reading the tabloids.

Robert clears his throat. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

He doesn’t know why Aaron’s smirking quite so much, because it’s true. He wasn’t. Robert knows Aaron can do miles better than that self-important twat.

“And you deciding to rob the facility during the gala has nothing to do with the Red Rider being there, yeah?”

“As if,” Robert says, verging on petulant. “This really is the best chance we’ve got of getting our names out,” he insists, which is also true. And that’s when another thought hits him. _Oh,_ he thinks. _You idiot_.

Because what if being professionally tied to him is the last thing Aaron wants for himself? They’ll be sharing more than headlines. They’ll be sharing successes, failures, _enemies_. And even if ( _when_ an uncharitable voice in his head injects) Aaron decides one day that he’s had enough of dealing with him, the consequences of their partnership will stick with him.

“We can wait, if,” Robert shrugs glumly, “this isn’t something you want.” He hopes he doesn’t sound too miserable. “If you think we’re going too fast, or–”

“I already agreed to it, you muppet,” Aaron informs him. “But if you’ve changed your mind _again_ ,” he rolls his eyes, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “guess it saves me having to buy a suit.”

“I’ll buy you the suit.” Robert doesn’t need Aaron staring back at him in surprise to know how quickly he’d said that, and how embarrassingly low and rough his voice had gone then.

An eternity passes before Aaron finally mumbles out a “Sure, whatever,” at the table, his cheeks pinking again.

“Yeah,” Robert starts, eager to salvage some of his dignity. “Now that we’ve settled that, let’s go over some of the other details.” He lets his tablet float to the middle of the table and resolves to not look at Aaron, or his twitching lips, or his knowing looks, for the next 15 minutes at least. He has a plan to perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> An awful place to end it, I know, but I'm not planning any more of this story at this moment, sorry!
> 
> Let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr at [spamela-hamderson](https://spamela-hamderson.tumblr.com/)


End file.
